Re: Philosophy 101 or God & depression etc...

Don't mean at all to tweak the beliefs of those who take a more traditional interpretation of Christian scriptures at all, so please don't take what follows this way, but here's my two cents:

So, if God created us in God's own image, what would that be? Caucasian males with lots of facial hair? I don't think so. The essence of God is creation, the ability to create, and love for that creation. I find the old and new testaments largely to be a catalog of God's mistakes largely revolving around God loving God's creation too much. The "Original Sin" was God's--tossing humanity out of paradise because God created us to be creators ourselves and all that entails ... curiousity, risk, going beyond the "rules". God then spends thousands of our years trying to beat us into submission, following what God thinks is best for us through God's love for us. God gets so caught up in this that God finally kills "his son" to prove a point to us. The lesson we learn is that its okay to kill in God's name. God finds that God's efforts have led towards destruction and not creation. God finally catches on -- to learn from your creations, you must let go of control of those creations and let them be what they can make of themselves.

So, for me, the Age of Miracles is over [thank God, figuratively and literally]. We're on our own. Which makes faith all the more important. If we receive any signs, it won't be through any science of creation. External proofs are the antithesis of faith. Any signs from God can only come from that part of God that exists within each of us.

Evolution may be the most brilliant aspect of God's creation, because its random introduction of variation into creation is what allows creation to become *more* than what God intended. My "disorder" may be a result of that process, but it is only a disorder in relation to what is culturally defined as order. Perhaps my other-order would be less traumatic if it didn't place me at odds with complacency so much. Take the "idiot-savant" for example -- damned and praised in the same cultural tag. This example of the extreme may play itself out to some other extent in all of us. I've said it before, I'll say it again. Whatever is responsible for our "dis"orders is also responsible for gifts. That our culture of complacency cannot often recognize these gifts is a sin identical to God taken the life of Jesus as an example. That we get convinced by our culture that we have no gifts to offer makes our collective sin all the worse.